Busi­ness forced out

A SPIKE in in­sur­ance has forced the own­ers of Moss­man Sec­ond­hand to close its doors af­ter 25 years of turn­ing un­wanted goods into trea­sured and use­ful items.

Own­ers Ivan Di­ack and Cherie Wil­liams, who have been run­ning the store for seven years, are dev­as­tated but the de­ci­sion was made for them when their cur­rent in­sur­ance pre­mi­ums in­creased by $750 a week.

“It’s quite emo­tional for the peo­ple who come in here and for Cherie and I, we just can’t af­ford the in­crease - no one can,” Ivan said.

“We’re up­set and dev­as­tated and feel like the Far North has been for­got­ten and we’re pay­ing for other things down south by the in­sur­ance com­pa­nies with the floods in Bris­bane and also Yasi, which has stuck an­other wicked blow.

“We had buy­ers com­ing to buy us out and Yasi stole that from us.

“Due to the in­sur­ance on the build­ing the land­lord can­not re­new the lease be­cause the in­sur- ance has gone so high the busi­ness has to close - 25 years of his­tory is go­ing out the door.”

Mr Di­ack said they are un­sure of what their plans are for the fu­ture, but will al­ways re­mem­ber their time with Moss­man Sec­ond­hand and giv­ing back to the community, in­clud­ing spread­ing Christ­mas joy with the help of Mrs Claus.

“Our fond­est mem­o­ries are see­ing chil­dren of all ages and sizes re­ceiv­ing presents from Mrs Claus, that warmed Cherie’s heart,” he said.

“All those peo­ple who used to come in, it was like a drop-in cen­tre, for a cup of tea and a yarn, thank you for the sup­port over the years, we will miss all of you.

“From the sto­ries from the old dig­gers and the sto­ries be­hind ev­ery piece of fur­ni­ture and piece of tool, it is go­ing to be missed.”

Mr Di­ack said he is wor­ried that the col­lapse of their busi­ness will not be the last one, with in­creas­ing in­sur­ance mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble to re­main open.

“We had to close and now we’ve got noth­ing to sell and no busi­ness, there’s go­ing to be a lot of peo­ple like this,” he said.

“I’ve been speak­ing to peo­ple and they’re all scared to be quite hon­est they have rea­son to be too, we had a good lit­tle busi­ness but now we have noth­ing and can’t start up any­where else be­cause of the in­sur­ance prob­lem.”

Moss­man Sec­ond­hand will be hold­ing a liq­ui­da­tion sale un­til they of­fi­cially close their doors on Novem­ber 10 and ev­ery­thing has to go, in­clud­ing the iconic para­chute that has been hang­ing in the store for 18 years.

They will be hold­ing a sausage siz­zle this week­end and next, with their friend Gypsy play­ing mu­sic for the fi­nal time at the busi­ness.